


Death

by wastefulreverie



Series: Angst Week 2018 [1]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, Body Dysphoria, Death, Depression, Gen, Gore, Identity Reveal, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, red huntress
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 18:40:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17229170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wastefulreverie/pseuds/wastefulreverie
Summary: Once Valerie learned Danny's secret, it all went downhill from there.





	Death

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Diddly's Angst Week back in August, just thought I'd post this up on here as well. I wrote this in one afternoon so it's not one of my best but ehhh

Valerie stared blankly in front of her. Wind whipping around her helmet, prying at her body as she tried to maintain balance on her board. She was shaking now, and her mind was screaming at her to _do_ something. Make it stop! _Stop!_ _STOP!_

But she had seen it. He had explained. He was still trying to explain. And Valerie was confused.

Phantom... the ghost she hated so much... was Danny Fenton? The boy that she had recklessly fallen in love with. He was some sort of weird hybrid, partially a disgusting ghost, and also part human.

She believed him, of course. After she had shot him, those white rings had engulfed her prey, causing him to change colors and crash onto a nearby roof. She had swooped down to finish him off when she realized that Phantom wasn't Phantom, but he  _was_ . And then he started talking and was still talking and she couldn't move anymore and her mind was going in circles trying to puzzle everything together.

And the picture the puzzle created was raw and uninviting. She was a monster. What had she even done to Danny? She had shot at him, chained him up, tried to  _kill_ him every day of the week. She had left him in fatal situations on purpose, she chanted his name in bloodlust as she forged her stronger self, she cursed his soul at bed at night for ruining her life.

But... he hadn't ruined her life. For so long, she had thought a ghost had. Danny wasn't a ghost, he held no malicious intent. That much was clear to her now, because the fog had been lifted from her eyes. Danny, when he was Phantom, clearly wasn't trying to kill her when he destroyed her old suit – he had known she wasn't inside of it!

To think, she had sworn to protect him, when she had been doing the opposite all along! Hell, what more had she been wrong about? She was a failure, cold and calculating. If she placed herself in Danny's shoes, she was an anti-hero, a borderline villain. Not the protector she had made herself believe.

And as Danny explained to her, she understood more. Her dad hadn't lost his job because of Phantom, Danny was trying to  _stop_ another ghost from destroying the place and had inadvertently gotten tangled up in the mess left behind.

If anyone, she was the one who destroyed her life; wasting all of her time on fulfilling rage and pointless grudges. She thought she had grown as a person, but in fact, she realized now that she had been doing the opposite. She had created some sort of... shell of her former self. Who even  _was_ Valerie Gray?

Danny probably hated her. She felt tears well up in her eyes, and did nothing to stop them as the negative thoughts and revelations bombarded her.

_I hate me. I'm a fool, I've only made everything so much worse._

“-Valerie? VALERIE!” he was saying. Oh, that's right. He couldn't see her face under her helmet. He probably thought she was mad or something.

“Valerie, I get it, I lied to you. Please, please don't hate me, for it. I lie to everyone, even my parents! It's... it was nothing anything against you, personally. I have to lie, otherwise... otherwise the world would see me as the freak I am.”

“Stop,” she brought herself to whisper. Danny went rigid where he stood, and Valerie began to snap herself out of her self-loathing stupor. She let herself descend down to where Danny stood on the roof, and she deactivated her suit. It recalled back into her body, from where Technus had altered her.

( _I've even screwed_ myself _up beyond repair, how can he forgive_ me _?_ )

She heard Danny stifle a gasp as she exposed her tear-stained face.

“It's... it's not your fault. All of it's mine, Danny. I... let my rage consume me,” she admitted, begrudgingly. The words felt wrong out loud, but they were all she could think at the moment.

“No, no,” Danny said. He sounded so surprised to have to be reassuring her. As if he still expected her to attack him. “Don't blame yourself. I get it, you're a ghost hunter. You thought what you thought was right.”

There was so much more to it than that. The way she had obsessed over Phantom's destruction. The way she had blocked out every other person in her life, even Danny – just so she could kill something she had pinned the nonexistent blame onto. The way she lusted in her fantasies of murder and spilled ectoplasm. That wasn't being a 'ghost hunter'. It wasn't for some righteous cause, it was personal revenge. And that revenge was pointless, because the one person she found hope in, was the sole cause of her obsession. Which made her a horrible person. She should die.

… _What_?

“That's not...” she tried to explain, but the words that she had expressed moments ago in her head failed to reach her tongue. “I wasn't okay.”

“Neither was I,” Danny grabbed her hands. He put his hand to her face, trying to wipe her tears. “You were fine. I was the one who screwed up.”

He also liked to blame himself, but she was right and he was wrong. From what he had explained, he had no choice that he was a ghost. He had no choice but to start ghost hunting.

Every choice she had made was her own. Which made her the bad guy. She was the monster. It was evident in the way Danny's eyes had lit up with fear once he had detransformed in front of her.

“Danny, you did what you had to. I was going after revenge.”

It was an out of character statement to admit defeat. He could see it. He was confused by her change in demeanor, change in motive.

“I... I guess,” Danny stuttered. “Are you alright, Valerie? I thought you'd be more... angry. No, I mean, I thought you'd be more surprised.”

She was surprised. But it was Danny, and she trusted him, as her crush. And in the remnants of her surprise, all she could see now is what she had done wrong.

* * *

 

Three months later, she still didn't know who Valerie Gray was. She had given up hunting, but the suit was still inside of her, waiting to be activated at any moment. Her body disgusted her now, especially since she had lost a lot of muscle from the lack of exercise and gained more chub. She considered to stop eating, but she was afraid that if she became skinnier again, the suit would poke out of her skin or something similarly morbid. And she still had to convince her Dad that she was okay. Because she knew she wasn't.

For a while, she was mad at herself for what she had done. She fell back into her old habits of pressing the blame on people, but instead of putting it on Danny, she internalized it. How could she be so blind? How could she be so ignorant and violent? It was stupid, because she was stupid!

At least she was trying to do better, right? Unfortunately, the only thing she found within her progress was regret.

For instance, when her Dad had found out, he was absolutely thrilled that she had stopped hunting! His elation only added fuel to her anger. Because she hadn't realized how much she had hurt him when she was the Red Huntress. How could she be so thoughtless to her own family, as well?

It seemed that everyone she touched in her life, she hurt.

It was worse when she actually had to face Danny at school. They had to talk some, and he tried being cordial with her. Sometimes, he even tried to offer to go flying with him. She always refused. She was keeping the suit inside of her, not letting the Red Huntress back out. She was locking that part of herself up for good.

About a month after the revelation, Vlad learned that she quit. He never asked why, but he stopped paying her Dad money. Things got rougher, and Valerie forced herself to take a second job to the Nasty Burger since she had more time instead of hunting. But her angry thoughts distracted her from completing anything with competence. She slacked off in school, and lost her second job because she couldn't even focus!

Valerie was a complete wreck, and not even Danny Phantom could save her. He shouldn't save her, because she knew she deserved this pain. It wasn't even close to the physical pain she made Danny go through, so she had to suffer through it. If he could handle ectoblasts and broken bones, she could handle this. After all, she was making up most of her struggles. It was her fault. Definitely her fault.

There were some moments she found herself being freed of her anger, lost in emotions much more intricate than the bullheaded anger she forced herself to swallow. It was usually in class, or in the shower, or when she was falling asleep at night, but she almost wanted to erase her revelation. Wished that she could go back to her old, anger ridden self, to never learn Danny's truth. Because that would be so, so much easier than having to live with the constant metric ton of regret she was heaving on her shoulders.

And then the anger was spurred again, the moment was gone, and all she could feel was nothing but the hopeless realization that there was no way out. She had heard of people going into depressions, but this felt a lot more complicated than being sad. Paulina used to say she was depressed, and Valerie used to feel sympathetic. Now, Valerie knew that there was no possible way Paulina could've felt anything as painful as this.

It wasn't long until Valerie started to constantly wonder if there was even a point to anything.

Before, she had been content with her atrocious grades. After all, she was saving Amity Park by ridding the town of the evil ghost boy! She was doing a service to the greater good! But now... school was her only hope of having a future, and she had already wasted it. Her GPA was so low, that even if she started trying now, no college would ever accept her. And the only way for her to  _have_ a future was to go to college. She had been told that a million times by every successful adult she knew.

So what was she supposed to do? If she started trying now, everything would be in vain. She'd never get to go to college, probably not even community college! She dreaded of being stuck doing the same trivial tasks she had to do at the Nasty Burger for the rest of her life! If she did that, she would never be happy, and if she wasn't happy, what was the point of living?

She was already going to die.

Maybe she could just hurry it up?

No.  _No, no_ . That's _wrong._

But what choice did she have? Did anybody even  _ need _ her? If she couldn't get a good job, then what was her purpose? Hell, what was anybody's purpose? The only person who did anything useful in this town was Danny, and he was already dead. Half-dead.

After all, death was an alluring solution to her self-hatred and regret. She was suffering to try to please her Dad. He was upset that she hadn't managed to keep up her second job, and that she was failing in school and was barely holding on to the Nasty Burger. He wanted her to do so much, and she couldn't do that, so she was useless to him, too!

Around the fourth month... death started to sound very nice. But she held it within herself. She continued school, and continued to slip. Lancer pulled her in for detention so many days that the Nasty Burger finally gave up on her.

“If you can't get to work on time, then you shouldn't come at all,” was what they had told her.

Danny had his own problems, so he didn't notice. Sam and Tucker didn't care enough. Because no one did care. Mr. Lancer didn't even question Valerie anymore, she was just a regular delinquent who had fallen to the bottom as soon as her money was taken away.

What was left for her?

Absolutely nothing.

Besides, once she died, she'd get to see her Mom. Mom wouldn't be happy, but... Valerie was used to being a disappoint. What mattered is that she would get to see her, after so many years.

She supposed it was her fate to end up like this, standing at the edge of her apartment building, staring at the concrete fifteen stories below. She had brought her MP3 player and was listening to her favorite song one last time. It was the one her Mom had always played for her, back when she was innocent. Back when Valerie wasn't a monstrous failure who tried to kill her friends and constantly disappointed the adults in her life, dooming herself to an unpromising future.

The music turned off. And she took a few moments to take some breaths as she tried to convince herself to make the plunge. This was right. This was her exit. It needed to be done, because Valerie Gray had no reason to exist anymore.

She bent her knees, closed her eyes, and the fall was very unceremonious. She panicked a little, but in the two seconds she fell, she convinced herself to accept it. Nothing was going to save her.

Until she heard the voices.

“Self-preservation mode: ACTIVATED.”

“VALERIE!” Danny.

She felt the red streamers of metal pooled out of her skin at an accelerated rate. They formed around her, and suddenly she was lifted up. A blaster was on her arm, and she gasped in shock as the voice in the suit resumed barking words. There was another scream, the scream of a ghost boy. He was flying towards her, eyes inflated with horror.

“Self-defense mode: PRIMARY TARGET, LOCATED. Engaging: MISSILE STRIKE.”

What was-? She didn't want this! She wanted to die!  
Something on her back hummed, and she felt it come over her head, flying towards the concerned, white-haired boy in front of her. Danny, who was still rushing forward, was so shocked and worried about Valerie that he didn't see it coming. He was trying to save her, and as always, she was putting him in danger.

“Danny, no!”

He didn't even have time to look as the missile hit him squarely in the chest. He was sent into the concrete, and the missile pulverized him. Somewhere during his fall, he changed back into Fenton.

Valerie had instinctively closed her eyes, but she could hear him breathing raggedly, trying to catch his breath. She flew down, a little out of practice, and let out a painful scream when she saw his open chest, red and green and irreparable. There were pieces of bone and organ tissue and nothing compared to the fierce green pumping out of his slow, stuttering heart.

His entire body was scorched, but the surprised expression was still plastered on his face when his heart finally stopped. Sam and Tucker were running down the street and she was still in her suit, yelling in anguish.

In that moment she panicked again. Valerie was far too emotionally wounded to take sentimentality in the face of the boy whose life had expired in trying to save her. The boy she had once loved. She left Danny behind, and cried, wailing on her board she had sworn never to use again.

Four hours later, after hearing about the death of Danny Fenton, Damon found Valerie's body in her bedroom, the gun still loose in her hand.

 


End file.
